


Fixing A Mistake

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Family, Family Feels, Fix-It, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-02 01:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13307742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: That night, someone else steps in to help Luke and Ben work out what went wrong





	Fixing A Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> Not betad. All egregious over-capitalization is mine.
> 
> Fix it for that scene. You know exactly which scene I'm talking about. Obviously major spoilers.
> 
> Also for the 1MW 3rd person challenge.

Seeing his nephew’s horrified eyes, Luke immediately powered off his lightsaber. There was a chance Ben would now attack him, but he had to risk it. The room fell into darkness for a moment, before a blue glow began to spread. It wasn’t Ben’s lightsaber; it came from behind Luke.

“I hoped I wouldn’t need to do this,” said a voice that Luke had only heard a few times before.

“Hello, father,” he replied without turning. Ben’s eyes got even wider at the knowledge that this was his grandfather.

“Both of you meet me out on the Temple steps,” Anakin commanded.

Luke wasn’t certain about that, but it wasn’t as though he had any better ideas on how to handle the rising darkness within Ben. Hanging his lightsaber back on his belt, Luke turned and ducked out of Ben’s room. He was tempted to wait for the boy and escort him, but at a certain point he had to trust that Anikin knew what he was doing, especially as he had stayed behind with Ben.

Almost ten minutes later, Ben cautiously approached the steps where Luke was sitting. He took a position about as far from his uncle as possible, but at least he was there. A moment later, Anikin appeared in the courtyard before them both.

He begin with a sigh. “I thought that I was past this with Luke,” he began. “I didn’t anticipate the mistakes he and Leia would make with Ben, or the rising Darkness.”

Luke thought he knew what his father was referring to; he hasn’t been certain about Leia’s choice to hide their connection to Darth Vader from Ben, though he had gone along with it. He stayed silent as Anakin quickly gave the short version of his history to Ben. Finally, Anakin said something Luke did not know.

“Master Yoda was wrong about something,” Anakin said, “and that mistake lead to death and destruction the likes of which none of us could have anticipated. In the ancient days, Force users were plentiful, and of all ages and races. Some tended towards the Light side of the force, and some towards the Dark side.

“Eventually, the Jedi codified their rules and laws, based on the beliefs of the first Masters of the Jedi Order. One of these beliefs was that, since many on the Dark side were quite passionate about one thing or another, that passion lead to the Dark Side. These Jedi Masters believed that the best way to remain in the Light was to forbid strong emotions, personal connections, and passionate feelings of any kind.” Anakin explained.

“They quickly realized that these goals were all but impossible to achieve, as almost every Force user felt connections to their family, their country, nation, planet, species, _something_.

Finally, the Masters realized that, by taking in young children, children so young that they could not remember their families, the Masters had a better chance of training this emotion out of their pupils. Thus, the modern Jedi way was born. This is the way that all of the Masters I knew - Yoda, Windu, Qui Gon, and Obi Wan, were trained.”

Anakin shook his head. “I was an anomaly for the modern age. I was ten when I was brought before the council for training; the oldest a child was usually brought into training was four. Because of my age, I had already established emotional connections. I loved my mother. I hated the slave trader who owned us. I knew joy and competition and pride from pod racing. All of these things scared Master Yoda. Unfortunately, for the wrong reason.”

Now Anakin turned to Luke, who could see from the corner of his eye that Ben was listening raptly. “If I was an anomaly, Luke was even stranger,” Anakin continued. “He began training with Obi Wan at nineteen. He had all of the emotions and connections that Master Yoda had feared in me. If someone he loved was threatened, he might also forsake the Jedi way. I did it for my mother and Padme. Luke did it for Leia and the rebellion.”

“Because we had these emotions, these weaknesses, as Master Yoda called them, there was potential in us to turn to the Dark Side. Modern Dark Side users were always more emotional, more willing to use the Force for their own advantage instead of the good of all, as Jedi preached.”

“However,” Anakin continued, “Master Yoda was wrong. Having human connections was not an automatic sentence for going Dark. They could, in fact, be a powerful incentive to remain in the light, at Leia is for Luke. Padme could have been that for me, had I not been manipulated by one of the greatest Sith Lords of recent memory,” he confessed.

“Had I been allowed to express my love for Padme in the open, had we been able to have our children in peace, as a family, I would probably not have turned to the Dark,” Anakin explained.

Luke sat up straighter. This was something he had never heard before. Of course, even in death Ben and Yoda were the most tight-lipped individuals he knew. Luke sensed this was a painful topic for his father, probably why he had never brought it up in their few past conversations. Luke hadn’t known that his parents were in love, or that their love was forbidden. He had never really thought about their relationship before, but had not believed it to be loving and consensual.

“But I loved her even before I became a padawan, and that love was more powerful than my commitment to the Jedi Council or Order,” Anakin continued. “Love is a powerful force for the Light Side. Only denying love, hiding it, being ashamed of it, allows it to be corrupted to the Dark.”

That made sense to Luke; after all, it was love that had turned his father back to the Light side, in the end.

“My love of my family was corrupted and used against me to turn me to the Dark,” Anakin confessed. “My love of my family is also what allowed me to return to the Light.”

There was a long, silent pause, as all three absorbed this.

“Now,” Anakin said after a moment,” I’m afraid that my own shame kept me from explaining this to you, Luke, before you almost made the same mistake. What Yoda taught you was true, to an extent, but it was the same thing he taught me. He insisted on repressing our emotions and personal connections. He insisted that they were weaknesses that would lead to the Dark, as believed that they had with me. He tried to drill this into you Luke, and as a result he… _warped_ your sense of the Force. What you sense as Dark is actually passion - neither Dark or Light.”

“You took in children to train who were older, just as you were, instead of infants as the Jedi Council used to. Because of this, all of them have emotions and passion within them; they are too old not to. But because of Yoda’s black and white thinking, you also believed these emotions to automatically be weaknesses that the Dark could exploit. When you scan young Ben,” here Anakin nodded at his grandson, “you sense conflict, love, fear, pain… all of the things that make us human. And because of your own training, you perceive these as Dark. That is the warp in your Force senses.”

“But this is the true Darkness,” Anakin said sternly. “Repressing those emotions; convincing your students that emotions are wrong, when they are an inherent part of them. This rigidity is what will have them seek the Dark, as an alternative to your austerity. You would unwittingly push them towards the Dark for something they cannot help, just as Yoda did with me.”

Luke felt as though he was collapsing - not with his body but within his mind. He had thought, for that brief moment earlier tonight, that he was failing Ben because the boy was full of Darkness. Had he actually already failed, because he had been the reason for it? But no, if his father was right then what he had sensed was not actually Darkness at all, but could have become such if Luke had acted… his mind was scrambling, just as it had been so many decades ago when he learned the truth about his father and the lies of his mentor. His entire world was crumbling down and had to be rebuilt before he could continue.

Warm arms, thin but strong, wrapped around Luke. Through his haze he realized that Ben had come to him. Ben, whom for one brief moment tonight he had considered... Ben who had looked at him with such confusion and fear. Ben whom he loved. Ben was now at his side, offering him comfort.

Because that was what loved ones did for each other, Luke realized. He had tried to keep Ben at a distance, because he was supposed to be emotionless and free of attachment. He had tried to do the same with Leia, but failed so often because of her own tenacity. He had tried to follow the teachings of Yoda and Obi Wan, and they had almost lead him to do the unthinkable. But family had saved him. Just as family had saved Anakin, and Luke himself in the past.

Slowly, his mind still reeling, Luke returned the hug.

\---

The next morning, the Jedi students were surprised to find Master Luke missing from breakfast. They quickly realized that Ben was gone as well. Instead, a ghostly blue figure appeared before them. “Master Luke has something to take care of this morning,” it said. “I am Master Anakin and I will be teaching you this morning in his stead.”

Luke and Ben spent the day in the Master’s private quarters, contacting Leia. At first, they used a hologram; Ben had spent most of his life seeing his mother through the blue tint of that technology, instead of in person. However, after lunch, Anakin showed them how to create a Force Bond. From then on, it was like they were in the same room together, though actually light years apart. It was the closest Ben had ever felt to his mother.

They shared Anakin’s lesson with her, and she apologized to Ben for keeping the truth of his grandfather a secret. Luke also explained what had happened the night before, and his brief moment of weakness, over before Ben even woke and saw him there. Ben had been scared to hear the truth, but also relieved that his uncle had already changed his mind; Ben could only imagine what might have happened if his grandfather’s spirit hadn’t then visited!

The family also talked about their feelings; something that both adults found hard. Luke, because he had spent years attempting to repress his, and Leia because had had been trained similarly as a Princess and then a political leader. She was always supposed to show a calm, deadpan face to the world, lest she offend or set herself at some disadvantage. For once, Ben found himself as the more capable one.

The wounds of so many years were not healed in a day, but the path had been started down. For Ben, from the terrifying moment he had woken up the night before, it had been one insane moment after another, as though he was tumbling in an out of control ship, spinning one way and then the next. But in the end, he knew, things would be getting better, both for him, and for his family.

In fact, things were better for all of the pupils at the Jedi training school. The next day, Luke resumed their lessons, but there was a dramatic shift. Anakin had spent part of the day telling his story to the other students, and the history of _both_ sides of the Force. Which, as he explained, didn’t actually have sides. It was a web that connected them all, and could be used for any purpose. Some purposes, such as hurting others, were seen as Dark, but the Force itself was not inherently so. He begged them to forget the binary that had been passed down through the ages, and focus on action and consequence instead.

Luke continued to teach the children in this vein. He stopped telling them to repress their feelings, and instead encouraged them to embrace the good they felt. When bad things happened, or a student felt a negative emotion, they were urged to share, rather than push those emotions down and let them fester. It was a refreshing change for all, as the adolescents had found it very hard to blank their moods as Luke had been previously teaching them.

In the end, the school flourished. Students of all ages attended, including those who were older than Luke, who’s Force sensitivity hadn’t been recognized during the Empire’s reign. The new Force order, for they abandoned the terms Jedi and Sith, prospered and grew populous. Some students gave into their baser emotions, and committed dark acts. These, however, were discovered and stopped by the others. Unlike before, one dark act was no longer call for redefining someone as a Sith, forever irredeemable. Instead, forgiveness, repentance, and second chances were the way of the Force. The New Republic flourished, as did the New Force Order, and peace reigned for many centuries.

\---

In another plane, two spirits watched over this progress.

“Wrong I was,” one admitted. “Fixed it you have.”

“Thank you Master,” replied the other, as the prophecy was finally fulfilled.

Balance had finally been restored.


End file.
